Morty Collecting RPG
1 Player
System: Android
Developer: adult swim games
Year of Release: 2016
Rick and Morty was one of the many shows I was regrettably late to the party on watching. Luckily this meant that I had two full season to indulge myself with in one massive sitting. It was lovely. Season two didn't quite live up to the first for me (why did Rick stop stuttering so much?) but I'm here to talk about Pocket Mortys, not the show at large. This is a brilliant idea for a game based on this property. Rick travels through dimensions forcing his Morty to fight other Rick's (and various other aliens) going around collecting their own Mortys to fight with. Not only is it heavily inspired by, but it basically just rips off Pokemon wholesale. And it works well.
The council of Ricks have banned Rick from using his portal gun all willy nilly, at least until he can prove his worth, by participating in the newest hit craze taking the multiverse by storm, Morty battles. There are so many Ricks in this game, that alone makes this worth checking out. The set up is fantastic and the visuals match. The basic Pokemon aesthetic has been lifted pretty much straight out of those games and a heavy coat of Rick and Morty has been splashed all over it. This is all rounded out with a rather pleasant soundtrack, that isn't anything amazing to write home about, but it fits and remixes some of the best music from the show.
Having stolen the incredibly successful formula of Pokemon the gameplay is pretty great. I assume limiting the 18 different types of Pokemon down to just three was not only a way to simplify the game, while also being a fairly subtle jab at that particular JRPG convention, the three types being rock paper and scissors, which trims the fat of the system down to it's barest of minimums. This makes sense to help keep the game quick and easy to understand, but it does pretty much shave the game down to "Oh, he has that type of Morty? Go his weakness!" Pokemon is already a damn simple game, but when you take out the types (and more specifically type combination) it strips the game of all the real depth. At this point it boils down to catch some Mortys, bash the bad Mortys with the perfect Morty to counter their type, reap the benefits. For a phone game, this might not be such a bad thing though. I'd also like to mention that the controls are pretty great. A d-pad and "a" button are placed just perfectly and respond really well.
Progression is just as simple, the hub world is the Citadel of Ricks, there you can heal, withdraw/deposit/combine Mortys, buy/craft items, battle the council if you qualify or hop to another Morty battle sanctioned dimension. Sometimes a character in the hub will have a simple item retrieval quest ("My Morty is hurt and I need to heal him, do you have an item that heals?") but I don't know if those are random or triggered when you hit various milestones. The overall goal is to hop dimensions beating the Ricks found there to earn their badges, and upon collecting enough you can fight your way through the six elite Ricks. There's thirty badges to collect in total, so the set up takes Pokemon's basis and tweaks it a bit.
My only other major complaint is how lame the dimensions are. They all appear to procedurally generated (I really can't tell), you can't pick which one you go to, and they each have a few wild Mortys running amok, some trainers to fight some random items and a chest to find. The trainers are brain dead and if you can find a way to avoid walking in front of them you won't have to fight them, which I found myself doing more often than not as the battle system is a bit too basic to be engaging in the long term. Eventually you find the boss Rick, beat him and the portal back to the Citadel appears. Rinse and repeat.
The only thing I've found that keeps this game from being completely free is the ability to pay for Blips and Chitz coupons. These allow you to go to one of the Blips and Chitz machines found around the worlds and get several items and a free Morty. Of course, these can be found by defeating the council of Ricks and sometimes in the chests strewn about the dimensions. I haven't felt any need to pay yet, but it's a pretty fair way of handling the system. Mortys are a little bit of a bitch to catch (the Pokeball equivalent is kind of pricey so far) so I can see the appeal, but it certainly isn't a necessary purchase.
Rick and Mortys great taste manages to shine through the kind of boring gameplay just enough to make this worth playing. So far I've only earned enough badges to have beaten two of the six Rick council members, but I feel like it's safe to say not too much is going to get shaken up between now and the end of the game. Ultimately if you enjoy the show, Pokemon, or especially if you enjoy both, give this a download. It's well worth at least mucking about in the world of Rick and Morty for a couple hours even if you aren't in it for the long haul.
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